Just before his departure on yet another posh taxpayer-funded Hawaiian vacation and only four days prior to the December enrollment deadline, President Barack Obama capitulated to pressure from vulnerable Senate Democrats and arbitrarily suspended Obamacare’s individual mandate for Americans whose insurance was cancelled by the law’s provisions.

Those people now qualify for a “hardship exemption” originally meant to cover only the truly destitute -- “destitute” now redefined to include victims of Obamacare.

The Wall Street Journal wagged:“If ObamaCare's benefit and income redistribution requirements made your old, cheaper, better health plan illegal, you now have the option of going without coverage without the government taking your money as punishment. You can also claim the tautological consolation of an ObamaCare hardship exemption due to ObamaCare itself…

“HHS is agreeing…that some people ‘are having difficulty finding an acceptable replacement.’ [HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius] means the new plans are overpriced.”

It was the administration’s fourteenth unilateral change to (violation of) its own “law of the land.”

Obamacare wasn’t improved, so the announcement wasn’t policy-related. It was a desperate political ploy to save the Democrat’s Senate majority -- an implicit admission that, in 2014, millions more will be uninsured than before the law went into effect, that Obamacare creates economic distress for many, that there never was a need to shoehorn all Americans into Bronze-Silver-Gold-Platinum plans, that catastrophic coverage was sufficient for many and that exchange plans were not selling well – or at all.

More Journal: “Mr. Obama…used to insist that the new plans are better and less expensive after subsidies than the old ‘substandard’ insurance. Now they're conceding that…some people should be free to choose less costly plans if they prefer -- or no plan -- and ObamaCare's all-you-can-eat benefits rules aren't necessary for quality health coverage after all. […]

“Premiums for catastrophic products are based on the assumption that enrollees would be under 30. A 55-year-old will now get a steep discount on care courtesy of the insurer's balance sheet, while other risk-tiers on the exchanges will have even fewer customers to make the actuarial math work.”

Indeed, because the move allows tax waivers for anyone who failed to meet the enrollment deadline, even larger numbers of younger, healthy people will not enroll in standard exchange plans. And older, less healthy people can forego coverage, because, if they experience health problems, they can enroll after the fact.

Both phenomena will further erode risk pools and guarantee higher future premiums for those already insured. An inevitable price spike will be apparent to millions before the 2014 election.

Add to the number of Americans already upset with Obamacare the people who spent hours upon hours over two months struggling through Healthcare.gov (http://www.healthcare.gov/ ) to buy policies that are not only more expensive than their cancelled plans, but also far costlier than the catastrophic coverage option just offered.

The administration hoped to control the political fallout from Obama’s broken promises, but it’s made the individual mandate indefensible. First, Obama delayed the employer, but not the individual mandate. Now he’s favoring individuals who were previously insured over the uninsured.

Megan McArdle observed: “However incoherent these fixes may seem, they send (a message)... [A]lthough liberal pundits may think that the law is…impossible to repeal, the administration does not believe that.”

The president has done lawlessly by executive fiat what congressional Republicans attempted to get him to do – only legally.

In a news conference only hours before announcement of the mandate suspension, Obama said, “"The basic structure of [Obamacare] is working, despite all the problems."

It’s not.

Intended to keep Obamacare alive, and vulnerable Senate Democrats safe, in reality, the December 20 announcement was a game-changer. Obama’s short-term “fixes” have only made Obamacare -- always ill-conceived, poorly-constructed and bureaucratic -- unstable.

It’s not Obamacare anymore. Unimaginably, It’s worse.

Something called “Obamacare” may linger, but it’s already not what its drafters imagined.

The law has failed. Obama killed -- repealed -- it by waiving the elements essential to Obamacare’s always-unlikely functionality.

The president may deny it, but all that remains is to hold the wake.

Jerry Shenk is a PennLive/Patriot-News community columnist. His work appears biweekly on PennLive. Readers may email him at jshenk2010@gmail.com.